Reintegrating the Study of Accuracy Into Social Cognition Research

Peer assumption: an illusory consensus hidden in the criminal responsibility of juvenile offender-evidence from psychology

Introduction

There is a consensus hidden in the criminal legislation of many countries that the criminal responsibility capacity of juvenile offenders is not significantly different from that of their peers. The purpose of this paper was to test this hypothesis. The research objects of this paper were 187 juvenile offenders in J Province, China, who are under detention measures, and 2,449 students from junior high school, senior high school and university in S Province as comparison objects. We subjected the gathered materials to independent-samples t-tests and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA).

Results

(1) The self-control ability (109.30, 123.59) and empathy ability (63.86, 72.45) of juvenile offenders were significantly different from those of ordinary minors, but the difference of dialectical thinking ability was not statistically significant; (2) Except for the influence of mother's education level and family income on dialectical thinking ability, the other variables had no statistical significance on the three kinds of ability. Therefore, it was suggested that the correction plan and means for juvenile offenders should focus on the improvement of self-control ability and empathy ability.

I understand your pain but I do not feel it: lower affective empathy in response to others' social pain in narcissism

Introduction

While the relationship between narcissism and empathy has been well-researched, studies have paid less attention to empathic accuracy, i.e., appreciating the precise strength of another person's emotions, and self-other distinction, in terms of the disparity between affective ratings for self and other in response to emotive stimuli. Furthermore, empathic responses may vary depending on whether the pain is physical or social.

Methods

We investigated empathic accuracy, affective empathy, and the distinction between pain, emotion and intensity ratings for self and other, in high (n = 44) and low (n = 43) narcissism groups (HNG and LNG, respectively) selected from 611 students, in response to both types of pain. Participants watched six videos where targets expressed genuine experiences of physical and social pain, and rated the perceived affect and pain experienced by the person in the video and their own empathic emotional responses.

Results and discussion

The HNG displayed lower affective empathy and empathic accuracy than the LNG for both pain types. Within the HNG there was higher empathic accuracy for social vs. physical pain, despite reduced affective empathy for social pain, in contrast to the LNG. In addition to this paradox, the HNG demonstrated greater differences between ratings for the self and for target others than the LNG, suggesting that narcissism is associated with higher self-other distinction in response to viewing other people describing social pain.

Interaction in acting training and its different manifestations in novice and professional actors

This study aimed to identify the characteristics of interactions during acting training and the underlying intrapersonal changes evoked by a training process that emphasizes paying attention to a partner (the Meisner technique). This was operationalized by conducting a post-hoc analysis and categorizing the utterances made by novice and professional actors during acting training based on video and audio recordings. In Study 1, novice participants tended to change their way of communication as the course progressed, decreasing the number of utterances that simply described the partner's behavior and increasing those that speculated about the partner's inner state. We then used a different focus placed on the interaction, as implied by the different kinds of utterances used, to describe the divergences between novice and professional actors regarding their interaction characteristics. In Study 2, results showed that while professional actors devoted themselves more to the connection with their partner and demonstrated more balanced communication, novice actors relied on general inference to speculate about others' affective states. By comparing the characteristics of the utterances between novice and professional actors as they played different roles or made switches (i.e., changing from passive to active utterance in communication), this study suggests that an important impact of acting training on social abilities relates to its potential to increase the levels of involvement in on-going interactions.

Cerebellum and Emotion in Social Behavior

Accumulating evidence suggests that the cerebellum plays a crucial role not only in the motor and cognitive domains but also in emotions and social behavior. In the present chapter, after a general introduction on the significance of the emotional components of social behavior, we describe recent efforts to understand the contributions of the cerebellum in social cognition focusing on the emotional and affective aspects. Specifically, starting from the description of the cerebello-cortical networks subtending the social-affective domains, we illustrate the most recent findings on the social cerebellum and the possible functional mechanisms by which the cerebellum modulate social-affective behavior. Finally, we discuss the possible consequences of cerebellar dysfunction in the social-affective domain, focusing on those neurological and psychopathological conditions in which emotional and social behavior difficulties have been described as being associated with cerebellar structural or functional alterations.

Infusing Context Into Emotion Perception Impacts Emotion Decoding Accuracy

The accurate decoding of facial emotion expressions lies at the center of many research traditions in psychology. Much of this research, while paying lip service to the importance of context in emotion perception, has used stimuli that were carefully created to be deprived of contextual information. The participants' task is to associate the expression shown in the face with a correct label, essentially changing a social perception task into a cognitive task. In fact, in many cases, the task can be carried out correctly without engaging emotion recognition at all. The present article argues that infusing context in emotion perception does not only add an additional source of information but changes the way that participants approach the task by rendering it a social perception task rather than a cognitive task. Importantly, distinguishing between accuracy (perceiving the intended emotions) and bias (perceiving additional emotions to those intended) leads to a more nuanced understanding of social emotion perception. Results from several studies that use the Assessment of Contextual Emotions demonstrate the significance and social functionality of simultaneously considering emotion decoding accuracy and bias for social interaction in different cultures, their key personality and societal correlates, and their function for close relationships processes.

Mu Rhythm Suppression Over Sensorimotor Regions is Associated with Greater Empathic Accuracy

When people encounter others’ emotions, they engage multiple brain systems, including parts of the sensorimotor cortex associated with motor simulation. Simulation-related brain activity is commonly described as a ‘low-level’ component of empathy and social cognition. It remains unclear whether and how sensorimotor simulation contributes to complex empathic judgments. Here, we combine a naturalistic social paradigm with a reliable index of sensorimotor cortex-based simulation: electroencephalography suppression of oscillatory activity in the mu frequency band. We recruited participants to watch naturalistic video clips of people (‘targets’) describing emotional life events. In two experiments, participants viewed these clips (i) with video and sound, (ii) with only video or (iii) with only sound and provided continuous ratings of how they believed the target felt. We operationalized ‘empathic accuracy’ as the correlation between participants’ inferences and targets’ self-report. In Experiment 1 (US sample), across all conditions, right-lateralized mu suppression tracked empathic accuracy. In Experiment 2 (Israeli sample), this replicated only when using individualized frequency-bands and only for the visual stimuli. Our results provide novel evidence that sensorimotor representations—as measured through mu suppression—play a role not only in low-level motor simulation, but also in higher-level inferences about others’ emotions, especially when visual cues are crucial for accuracy.

Empathy in Social Anxiety Disorder: The Association with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Objectives: Our main hypothesis in this study was that patients with social anxiety disorder (SAD) and comorbid attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) had lower empathy levels than those without ADHD. Also, after controlling for the severity of SAD and depression, we hypothesized that ADHD symptoms contributed to lower levels of empathy in SAD patients.Methods: 72 patients (46 females, 32 males) with SAD between the ages of 18-65 years were divided into two groups as those with (n = 32) and those without ADHD (n = 40). Participants were evaluated using the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS), Turgay's Adult Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and Empathy Quotient. In this study, Mann Whitney-U test, Spearman correlation test, logistic and multiple regression analysis were used.Results: Education level (U = 371.5, p = .002) and empathy scores (U = 259.5, p < .0001) of SAD patients with ADHD were significantly lower than those without ADHD. BDI (U = 206.5, p < .0001), LSAS total (U = 454.5, p = .036), fear (U = 457.0, p = .038), and avoidance scores (U = 453.0, p = .034) were higher in SAD patients with ADHD than those without ADHD. Low levels of empathy (B = - 0.119, Exp(B) = 0.895, p = .014) and high severity of current depression (B = 0.119, Exp(B) = 1.127, p = .001) were significantly associated with comorbidity between SAD and ADHD. ADHD-inattention (β = -0.369, Exp(B) = -0.541, p = .004), and depression (β = -0.262, Exp(B) = -0.212, p = .036) negatively predicted empathy levels.Conclusions: Our findings may provide some evidence for the contribution of ADHD-inattention and depression to poor empathy in SAD patients. Therefore, it is recommended that symptoms of ADHD-inattention and depression should be carefully evaluated in SAD patients with low empathy.

Investigation of the neural correlates of mentalizing through the Dynamic Inference Task, a new naturalistic task of social cognition

Understanding others' intentions requires both the identification of social cues (e.g., emotional facial expressions, gaze direction) and the attribution of a mental state to another. The neural substrates of these processes have often been studied separately, and results are heterogeneous, in part attributable to the variety of paradigms used. The aim of the present study was to explore the neural regions underlying these sociocognitive processes, using a novel naturalistic task in which participants engage with human protagonists featured in videos. A total of 51 right-handed volunteers underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing the Dynamic Inference Task (DIT), manipulating the degree of inference (high vs. low), the presence of emotion (emotional vs. nonemotional), and gaze direction (direct vs. averted). High nonemotional inference elicited neural activation in temporal regions encompassing the right posterior superior temporal sulcus. The presence (vs. absence) of emotion in the high-inference condition elicited a bilateral pattern of activation in internal temporal areas around the amygdala and orbitofrontal structures, as well as activation in the right dorsomedial part of the superior frontal gyrus and the left precuneus. On account of its dynamic, naturalistic approach, the DIT seems a suitable task for exploring social interactions and the way we interact with others, both in nonclinical and clinical populations.

The straw man effect: Partisan misrepresentation in natural language

Political discourse often seems divided not just by different preferences, but by entirely different representations of the debate. Are partisans able to accurately describe their opponents’ position, or do they instead generate unrepresentative “straw man” arguments? In this research we examined an (incentivized) political imitation game by asking partisans on both sides of the U.S. health care debate to describe the most common arguments for and against ObamaCare. We used natural language-processing algorithms to benchmark the biases and blind spots of our participants. Overall, partisans showed a limited ability to simulate their opponents’ perspective, or to distinguish genuine from imitation arguments. In general, imitations were less extreme than their genuine counterparts. Individual difference analyses suggest that political sophistication only improves the representations of one’s own side but not of an opponent’s side, exacerbating the straw man effect. Our findings suggest that false beliefs about partisan opponents may be pervasive.

Empathic Accuracy and Cognitive and Affective Empathy in Young Adults With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder

This study investigated whether young adults with ASD (n = 29) had impairments in Cognitive Empathy (CE), Affective Empathy (AE) or Empathic Accuracy (EA; the ability to track changes in others' thoughts and feelings) compared to typically-developing individuals (n = 31) using the Empathic Accuracy Task (EAT), which involves watching narrators recollecting emotionally-charged autobiographical events. Participants provided continuous ratings of the narrators' emotional intensity (indexing EA), labelled the emotions displayed (CE) and reported whether they shared the depicted emotions (AE). The ASD group showed deficits in EA for anger but did not differ from typically-developing participants in CE or AE on the EAT. The ASD group also reported lower CE (Perspective Taking) and AE (Empathic Concern) on the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, a self-report questionnaire.

The Affiliative Role of Empathy in Everyday Interpersonal Interactions

Empathy theoretically serves an affiliative interpersonal function by satisfying motives for intimacy and union with others. Accordingly, empathy is expected to vary depending on the situation. Inconsistent empirical support for empathy's affiliative role may be because of methodology focused on individual differences in empathy or differences between controlled experimental conditions, which fail to capture its dynamic and interpersonal nature. To address these shortcomings, we used ecological momentary assessment to establish typical patterns of empathy across everyday interactions. Associations among empathy, affect, and interpersonal behaviour of self and interaction partner were examined in a student sample (N = 330), then replicated in a preregistered community sample (N = 279). Multilevel structural equation modelling was used to distinguish individual differences in empathy from interaction-level effects. Results show that people are more empathetic during positively valenced interactions with others perceived as warm and when expressing warmth. By confirming the typically affiliative role of empathy, existing research to the contrary can be best understood as exceptions to the norm.

An Investigation of Behavioural and Self-Reported Cognitive Empathy Deficits in Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorders and Adolescents With Behavioural Difficulties

Deficits in empathy have been considered hallmarks in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) but are also considered to underlie antisocial behaviour associated with individuals with callous unemotional traits (CU). Research has suggested that individuals with autism spectrum disorders show more difficulties with cognitive empathy, and that individuals diagnosed with behaviours difficulties, characterised by CU traits and antisocial behaviour, demonstrate low affective empathy. In the current manuscript we present findings of two studies. The first study describes the validation of a new stimulus set developed for the empathic accuracy task, focused on its cognitive component. The second study compares the performance of 27 adolescents with ASD, 27 age matched typically developing adolescents and 17 adolescents with behavioural difficulties on the empathic accuracy task and a self-report measure of empathy. While, no differences were observed between the three groups across the empathy accuracy task, the adolescents with ASD and CD showed deficits in their cognitive empathy across the self-report measure. Adolescents with ASD showed lower scores in particularly their perspective taking abilities, whereas the adolescences with behavioural difficulties showed more difficulties with their online simulation. No differences in self-reported affective empathy across the three groups were observed. Clinical implications of the findings are discussed.

Fast and Slow Empathic Perceptions in Couples' Daily Lives Use Different Cues

Empathic accuracy, the ability to infer another person's emotions, thoughts, and other fleeting mental states, has been linked to assumed similarity (wherein the perceiver assumes that another person's mental states are similar to their own) and direct accuracy (wherein the perceiver uses various external cues to reach their judgment). Previous research has linked this component model, as well as dual process models, to neuroscientific models of empathy, but has not linked these components with dual process accounts directly. Thus, we examined whether assumed similarity involves rapid (type-1) processing while direct accuracy involves slower (type-2) inferences. In three dyadic daily diary samples (total N = 262 romantic couples), we examined associations between both components and response times. As expected, direct accuracy, but not assumed similarity, was associated with slower response times. Our findings suggest links between previously disparate lines of research and identify situations which may tip the balance between the empathic components.

Compassionate Conservation Clashes With Conservation Biology: Should Empathy, Compassion, and Deontological Moral Principles Drive Conservation Practice?

“Compassionate Conservation” is an emerging movement within conservation science that is gaining attention through its promotion of “ethical” conservation practices that place empathy and compassion and the moral principles of “first, do no harm” and “individuals matter” at the forefront of conservation practice. We have articulated elsewhere how Compassionate Conservation, if adopted, could be more harmful for native biodiversity than any other conservation action implemented thus far, while also causing more net harm to individuals than it aims to stop. Here, we examine whether empathy, compassion and inflexible adherence to moral principles form a solid basis upon which to meet the goals of conservation biology as specified by pioneers in the discipline. Specifically, we examine a large empirical literature demonstrating that empathy is subject to significant biases and that inflexible adherence to moral rules can result in a “do nothing” approach. In light of this literature, we argue that our emotional systems have not evolved to provide a reliable basis for making decisions as to how best to ensure the long-term persistence of our planet. Consequently, in its most radical form, the Compassionate Conservation philosophy should not be enshrined as a legalized guiding principle for conservation action.

Social Cognition in the Real World: Reconnecting the Study of Social Cognition With Social Reality

The scientific study of social cognition is a growing field which promises to deliver valuable insights into how the brain underpins human’s social success. However, the poor ecological validity of many popular paradigms constrains the progress of social cognitive scientists. Highly simplistic and contrived stimuli are commonplace, despite the complexity and unpredictability of real-world social experiences. A shift toward a cognitive ethology approach would allow us to determine if, when, and how specific cognitive processes contribute to real-world functioning. This shift would enable us to break new ground in our understanding of the cognitions which underpin so much of the human experience. To address these questions, we must innovate and test social cognitions in dynamic, multimodal, context-embedded, and interactive environments. Furthermore, measuring responses dynamically and in terms of accuracy (rather than based on arbitrary criteria defined by the experimenter), would improve ecological validity. Finally, researchers should take into account sample diversity and participants’ motivation to ensure the generalizability of findings to everyday interactions. This article considers these issues in turn and outlines recent research which demonstrates how they might be overcome.

An association between biased impression updating and relationship facilitation: A behavioral and fMRI investigation

Is ingroup bias associated with any benefit for maintaining close relationships? We examined the link between biased impression updating for ingroup members (i.e., friends) and relationship maintenance, as measured by the number of friends participants reported having (Studies 1 and 2). We also investigated the underlying neural basis of this possible effect, focusing on activity in the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ), a region of the social brain involved in moral updating (Study 2). Specifically, we tested whether selectively discounting negative information about close others, manifested in reduced impression updating, and indexed by reduced RTPJ activity, is related to maintaining close relationships. In Study 1, after imagining a friend and a stranger performing different positive and negative behaviors, participants who were reluctant to update how close they felt to their friend (friend-closeness) reported having more friends in real life. In Study 2, participants were led to believe that a friend and a stranger gave money to them or took money away from them, while they were in the scanner. Participants who engaged in less negative updating of friends versus strangers reported having more friends. Participants who engaged in less friend-closeness updating also showed reduced RTPJ activity when their friend took money from them, and this neural pattern was associated with reports of having more friends. Together, these findings suggest that selectively discounting close others' negative behavior is linked to maintaining close relationships, indicating a potential social benefit of ingroup bias.

Changes in Empathy Mediate the Effects of Cognitive-Behavioral Group Therapy but Not Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for Social Anxiety Disorder

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) has been shown to be associated with difficulty in the ability to vicariously share others' positive emotions (positive affective empathy). Mixed evidence also suggests potentially impaired recognition of the positive and negative emotions of others (cognitive empathy) and impaired or enhanced sharing of the negative emotions of others (negative affective empathy). Therefore, we examined whether two efficacious treatments for SAD, cognitive-behavioral group therapy (CBGT) and mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), improve empathy in SAD relative to a wait-list condition and whether improvements in empathy mediate improvements in social anxiety. In the context of a randomized controlled trial, participants with SAD completed an empathy task at baseline, posttreatment/wait-list (N = 81), and 1-year follow-up (N = 37). Relative to both MBSR and wait-list, CBGT resulted in significant improvements in positive affective empathy. CBGT-related changes in positive affective empathy also mediated improvements in social anxiety at both posttreatment/wait-list and at 1-year follow-up. Other indices of empathy did not change differentially across the three conditions. Therefore, one way in which CBGT may specifically confer benefits to individuals with SAD is through increasing their ability or willingness to share in the positive emotions of others.

Computational Models of Emotion Inference in Theory of Mind: A Review and Roadmap

Research on social cognition has fruitfully applied computational modeling approaches to explain how observers understand and reason about others' mental states. By contrast, there has been less work on modeling observers' understanding of emotional states. We propose an intuitive theory framework to studying affective cognition-how humans reason about emotions-and derive a taxonomy of inferences within affective cognition. Using this taxonomy, we review formal computational modeling work on such inferences, including causal reasoning about how others react to events, reasoning about unseen causes of emotions, reasoning with multiple cues, as well as reasoning from emotions to other mental states. In addition, we provide a roadmap for future research by charting out inferences-such as hypothetical and counterfactual reasoning about emotions-that are ripe for future computational modeling work. This framework proposes unifying these various types of reasoning as Bayesian inference within a common "intuitive Theory of Emotion." Finally, we end with a discussion of important theoretical and methodological challenges that lie ahead in modeling affective cognition.

Empathic Accuracy in Male Adolescents with Conduct Disorder and Higher versus Lower Levels of Callous-Unemotional Traits

Adolescents with disruptive behavior disorders are reported to show deficits in empathy and emotion recognition. However, prior studies have mainly used questionnaires to measure empathy or experimental paradigms that are lacking in ecological validity. We used an empathic accuracy (EA) task to study EA, emotion recognition, and affective empathy in 77 male adolescents aged 13–18 years: 37 with Conduct Disorder (CD) and 40 typically-developing controls. The CD sample was divided into higher callous-emotional traits (CD/CU+) and lower callous-unemotional traits (CD/CU-) subgroups using a median split. Participants watched films of actors recalling happy, sad, surprised, angry, disgusted or fearful autobiographical experiences and provided continuous ratings of emotional intensity (assessing EA), as well as naming the emotion (recognition) and reporting the emotion they experienced themselves (affective empathy). The CD and typically-developing groups did not significantly differ in EA and there were also no differences between the CD/CU+ and CD/CU- subgroups. Participants with CD were significantly less accurate than controls in recognizing sadness, fear, and disgust, all ps < 0.050, rs ≥ 0.30, whilst the CD/CU- and CD/CU+ subgroups did not differ in emotion recognition. Participants with CD also showed affective empathy deficits for sadness, fear, and disgust relative to controls, all ps < 0.010, rs ≥ 0.33, whereas the CD/CU+ and CD/CU- subgroups did not differ in affective empathy. These results extend prior research by demonstrating affective empathy and emotion recognition deficits in adolescents with CD using a more ecologically-valid task, and challenge the view that affective empathy deficits are specific to CD/CU+.

Socio-neuro risk factors for suicidal behavior in criminal offenders with psychotic disorders

Relative to the general population, individuals with psychotic disorders have a higher risk of suicide. Suicide risk is also elevated in criminal offenders. Thus, psychotic-disordered individuals with antisocial tendencies may form an especially high-risk group. We built upon prior risk analyses by examining whether neurobehavioral correlates of social cognition were associated with suicidal behavior in criminal offenders with psychotic disorders. We assessed empathic accuracy and brain structure in four groups: (i) incarcerated offenders with psychotic disorders and past suicide attempts, (ii) incarcerated offenders with psychotic disorders and no suicide attempts, (iii) incarcerated offenders without psychotic disorders and (iv) community non-offenders without psychotic disorders. Established suicide risk variables were examined along with empathic accuracy and gray matter in brain regions implicated in social cognition. Relative to the other groups, offenders with psychotic disorders and suicide attempts had lower empathic accuracy and smaller temporal pole volumes. Empathic accuracy and temporal pole volumes were significantly associated with suicide attempts independent of other risk variables. The results indicate that brain and behavioral correlates of social cognition may add incremental value to models of suicide risk.

The impact of empathy and reappraisal on emotional intensity recognition

Empathy represents a fundamental ability that allows for the creation and cultivation of social bonds. As part of the empathic process, individuals use their own emotional state to interpret the content and intensity of other people's emotions. Therefore, the current study was designed to test two hypotheses: (1) empathy for the pain of another will result in biased emotional intensity judgment; and (2) changing one's emotion via emotion regulation will modulate these biased judgments. To test these hypotheses, in experiment one we used a modified version of a well-known task that triggers an empathic reaction We found that empathy resulted in biased emotional intensity judgment. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of a bias in the recognition of emotional facial expressions as a function of empathy for pain. In experiment two, we replicated these findings in an independent sample, and further found that this biased emotional intensity judgment can be moderated via reappraisal. Taken together, our findings suggest that the novel task used here can be employed to further explore the relation between emotion regulation and empathy.

Women Know Better What Other Women Think and Feel: Gender Effects on Mindreading across the Adult Life Span

Research recurrently shows that females perform better than males on various mindreading tasks. The present study contributes to this growing body of literature by being the first to demonstrate a female own-gender mindreading bias using a naturalistic social cognition paradigm including female and male targets. We found that women performed better at reading others’ minds, and that they were specifically more capable to read female targets, an own-gender target effect absent in men. Furthermore, a non-linear negative effect of perceiver age on mindreading performance was examined within a sample covering the age range of 17–70 years, as indicated by a stronger performance decrease setting on by the age of 30 years and continuing throughout middle and old age. These findings add to a more comprehensive understanding of the contextual factors influencing mindreading performance in typically developing adults.

The Interpersonal Functions of Empathy: A Relational Perspective

Empathy is an extensively studied construct, but operationalization of effective empathy is routinely debated in popular culture, theory, and empirical research. This article offers a process-focused approach emphasizing the relational functions of empathy in interpersonal contexts. We argue that this perspective offers advantages over more traditional conceptualizations that focus on primarily intrapsychic features (i.e., within the individual). Our aim is to enrich current conceptualizations and empirical approaches to the study of empathy by drawing on psychological, philosophical, medical, linguistic, and anthropological perspectives. In doing so, we highlight the various functions of empathy in social interaction, underscore some underemphasized components in empirical studies of empathy, and make recommendations for future research on this important area in the study of emotion.

Cortical thickness of neural substrates supporting cognitive empathy in individuals with schizophrenia

BACKGROUND

Cognitive empathy is supported by the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), anterior mid-cingulate cortex (aMCC), insula (INS), supplementary motor area (SMA), right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), and precuneus (PREC). In healthy controls, cortical thickness in these regions has been linked to cognitive empathy. As cognitive empathy is impaired in schizophrenia, we examined whether reduced cortical thickness in these regions was associated with poorer cognitive empathy in this population.

METHODS

41 clinically-stable community-dwelling individuals with schizophrenia and 46 healthy controls group-matched on demographic variables completed self-report empathy questionnaires, a cognitive empathy task, and structural magnetic resonance imaging. We examined between-group differences in study variables using t-tests and analyses of variance. Next, we used Pearson correlations to evaluate the relationship between cognitive empathy and cortical thickness in the mPFC, IFG, aMCC, INS, SMA, TPJ, and PREC in both groups.

RESULTS

Individuals with schizophrenia demonstrated cortical thinning in the IFG, INS, SMA, TPJ, and PREC (all p<0.05) and impaired cognitive empathy across all measures (all p<0.01) relative to controls. While cortical thickness in the mPFC, IFC, aMCC, and INS (all p<0.05) was related to cognitive empathy in controls, we did not observe these relationships in individuals with schizophrenia (all p>0.10).

CONCLUSIONS

Individuals with schizophrenia have reduced cortical thickness in empathy-related neural regions and significant impairments in cognitive empathy. Interestingly, cortical thickness was related to cognitive empathy in controls but not in the schizophrenia group. We discuss other mechanisms that may account for cognitive empathy impairment in schizophrenia.

Seeing the world through others' minds: Inferring social context from behaviour

Past research tells us that individuals can infer information about a target's emotional state and intentions from their facial expressions (Frith & Frith, 2012), a process known as mentalising. This extends to inferring the events that caused the facial reaction (e.g. Pillai, Sheppard, & Mitchell, 2012; Pillai et al., 2014), an ability known as retrodictive mindreading. Here, we enter new territory by investigating whether or not people (perceivers) can guess a target's social context by observing their response to stimuli. In Experiment 1, perceivers viewed targets' responses and were able to determine whether these targets were alone or observed by another person. In Experiment 2, another group of perceivers, without any knowledge of the social context or what the targets were watching, judged whether targets were hiding or exaggerating their facial expressions; and their judgments discriminated between conditions in which targets were observed and alone. Experiment 3 established that another group of perceivers' judgments of social context were associated with estimations of target expressivity to some degree. In Experiments 1 and 2, the eye movements of perceivers also varied between conditions in which targets were observed and alone. Perceivers were thus able to infer a target's social context from their visible response. The results demonstrate an ability to use other minds as a window onto a social context that could not be seen directly.

Empathy for positive and negative emotions in social anxiety disorder

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is associated with elevated negative and diminished positive affective experience. However, little is known about the way in which individuals with SAD perceive and respond emotionally to the naturally-unfolding negative and positive emotions of others, that is, cognitive empathy and affective empathy, respectively. In the present study, participants with generalized SAD (n = 32) and demographically-matched healthy controls (HCs; n = 32) completed a behavioral empathy task. Cognitive empathy was indexed by the correlation between targets' and participants' continuous ratings of targets' emotions, whereas affective empathy was indexed by the correlation between targets' and participants' continuous self-ratings of emotion. Individuals with SAD differed from HCs only in positive affective empathy: they were less able to vicariously share others' positive emotions. Mediation analyses revealed that poor emotional clarity and negative interpersonal perceptions among those with SAD might account for this finding. Future research using experimental methodology is needed to examine whether this finding represents an inability or unwillingness to share positive affect.

Observers versus agents

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to explore whether distinctive modes (observation vs control) of presenting diverse content differentially influence users. To achieve this goal, The authors first conceptualize empathy as social cognition and discuss the possible psychological mechanisms for divergent associations between observation-based media (i.e. video media) and control-based media (i.e. game media).

Design/methodology/approach

– In total, 300 adults (150 females) participated in this study through an online survey.

Findings

– Time spent with video media (television and film) was positively associated with empathy, which in turn was associated with enhanced social connectedness. However, time spent on game media (video games, computer games, and smartphone games) was negatively associated with empathy, which in turn was associated with inferior social connectedness.

Originality/value

– While previous studies on the effects of media have focussed mainly on content, the present study focusses on the effects of mode. The mode-focussed approach presents evidence contradictory to the content-focussed approach.

Signal and Noise in the Perception of Facial Emotion Expressions

Human interactions are replete with emotional exchanges, and hence, the ability to decode others’ emotional expressions is of great importance. The present research distinguishes between the emotional signal (the intended emotion) and noise (perception of secondary emotions) in social emotion perception and investigates whether these predict the quality of social interactions. In three studies, participants completed laboratory-based assessments of emotion recognition ability and later reported their perceptions of naturally occurring social interactions. Overall, noise perception in the recognition task was associated with perceiving more negative emotions in others and perceiving interactions more negatively. Conversely, signal perception of facial emotion expressions was associated with higher quality in social interactions. These effects were moderated by relationship closeness in Greece but not in Germany. These findings suggest that emotion recognition as assessed in the laboratory is a valid predictor of social interaction quality. Thus, emotion recognition generalizes from the laboratory to everyday life.

The neural networks of subjectively evaluated emotional conflicts

Previous work on the neural underpinnings of emotional conflict processing has largely focused on designs that instruct participants to ignore a distracter which conflicts with a target. In contrast, this study investigated the noninstructed experience and evaluation of an emotional conflict, where positive or negative cues can be subjectively prioritized. To this end, healthy participants freely watched short film scenes that evoked emotional conflicts while their BOLD responses were measured. Participants' individual ratings of conflict and valence perception during the film scenes were collected immediately afterwards, and the individual ratings were regressed against the BOLD data. Our analyses revealed that (a) amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex were significantly involved in prioritizing positive or negative cues, but not in subjective evaluations of conflict per se, and (b) superior temporal sulcus (STS) and inferior parietal lobule (IPL), which have been implicated in social cognition and emotion control, were involved in both prioritizing positive or negative cues and subjectively evaluating conflict, and may thus constitute "hubs" or "switches" in emotional conflict processing. Psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analyses further revealed stronger functional connectivity between IPL and ventral prefrontal-medial parietal areas in prioritizing negative cues, and stronger connectivity between STS and dorsal-rostral prefrontal-medial parietal areas in prioritizing positive cues. In sum, our results suggest that IPL and STS are important in the subjective evaluation of complex conflicts and influence valence prioritization via prefrontal and parietal control centers. Hum Brain Mapp 37:2234-2246, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Feeling Me, Feeling You

Does knowing your own emotions relate to knowing those of others? We argue that our ability to experience and label our own emotions in a differentiated and specific manner is related to the ability to accurately perceive the level of emotions in others. In an experience sampling study among romantic couples, we tested the hypothesis that individuals with higher levels of emotion differentiation are characterized by higher levels of empathic accuracy (i.e., judge others’ emotions more accurately). In line with expectations, results showed that individuals who differentiate highly between their negative emotions are more able to accurately infer how pleasant their partners are feeling across daily life. This finding establishes a link between perceptions of our own and others’ emotions and provides evidence that the skills we use to understand our own emotions are also relevant for understanding how others feel.

Pain empathy in schizophrenia: an fMRI study

Although it has been proposed that schizophrenia is characterized by impaired empathy, several recent studies found intact neural responses on tasks measuring the affective subdomain of empathy. This study further examined affective empathy in 21 schizophrenia outpatients and 21 healthy controls using a validated pain empathy paradigm with two components: (i) observing videos of people described as medical patients who were receiving a painful sound stimulation treatment; (ii) listening to the painful sounds (to create regions of interest). The observing videos component incorporated experimental manipulations of perspective taking (instructions to imagine 'Self' vs 'Other' experiencing pain) and cognitive appraisal (information about whether treatment was 'Effective' vs 'Not Effective'). When considering activation across experimental conditions, both groups showed similar dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and anterior insula (AI) activation while merely observing others in pain. However, there were group differences associated with perspective taking: controls showed relatively greater dACC and AI activation for the Self vs Other contrast whereas patients showed relatively greater activation in these and additional regions for the Other vs Self contrast. Although patients demonstrated grossly intact neural activity while observing others in pain, they showed more subtle abnormalities when required to toggle between imagining themselves vs others experiencing pain.

Being Sherlock Holmes: Can we sense empathy from a brief sample of behaviour?

Mentalizing (otherwise known as 'theory of mind') involves a special process that is adapted for predicting and explaining the behaviour of others (targets) based on inferences about targets' beliefs and character. This research investigated how well participants made inferences about an especially apposite aspect of character, empathy. Participants were invited to make inferences of self-rated empathy after watching or listening to an unfamiliar target for a few seconds telling a scripted joke (or answering questions about him/herself or reading aloud a paragraph of promotional material). Across three studies, participants were good at identifying targets with low and high self-rated empathy but not good at identifying those who are average. Such inferences, especially of high self-rated empathy, seemed to be based mainly on clues in the target's behaviour, presented either in a video, a still photograph or in an audio track. However, participants were not as effective in guessing which targets had low or average self-rated empathy from a still photograph showing a neutral pose or from an audio track. We conclude with discussion of the scope and the adaptive value of this inferential ability.

When your friends make you cringe: social closeness modulates vicarious embarrassment-related neural activity

Social closeness is a potent moderator of vicarious affect and specifically vicarious embarrassment. The neural pathways of how social closeness to another person affects our experience of vicarious embarrassment for the other's public flaws, failures and norm violations are yet unknown. To bridge this gap, we examined the neural response of participants while witnessing threats to either a friend's or a stranger's social integrity. The results show consistent responses of the anterior insula (AI) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), shared circuits of the aversive quality of affect, as well as the medial prefrontal cortex and temporal pole, central structures of the mentalizing network. However, the ACC/AI network activation was increased during vicarious embarrassment in response to a friend's failures. At the same time, the precuneus, a brain region associated with self-related thoughts, showed a specific activation and an increase in functional connectivity with the shared circuits in the frontal lobe while observing friends. This might indicate a neural systems mechanism for greater affective sharing and self-involvement while people interact with close others that are relevant to oneself.

Approximating implicit and explicit mentalizing with two naturalistic video-based tasks in typical development and autism spectrum disorder

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been proposed to show greater impairments in implicit than explicit mentalizing. To test this proposition, we developed two comparable naturalistic tasks for a performance-based approximation of implicit and explicit mentalizing in 28 individuals with ASD and 23 matched typically developed (TD) participants. Although both tasks were sensitive to the social impairments of individuals with ASD, implicit mentalizing was not more dysfunctional than explicit mentalizing. In TD participants, performance on the tasks did not correlate with each other, whereas in individuals with ASD they were highly correlated. These findings suggest that implicit and explicit mentalizing processes are separable in typical development. In contrast, in individuals with ASD implicit and explicit mentalizing processes are similarly impaired and closely linked suggesting a lack of developmental specification of these processes in ASD.

Inferring other people's states of mind: Comparison across social anxiety, body dysmorphic, and obsessive-compulsive disorders

BACKGROUND

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) and body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) are characterized by fears of negative evaluation by others (related to one's own incompetence or flawed appearance, respectively). Previous research has shown that individuals with SAD and BDD exhibit difficulty identifying facial expressions and interpretive biases for threat in social situations. The current study aimed at further investigating social cognition in SAD, BDD, and mentally healthy controls (35 individuals per group, respectively). Further, 35 individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) as a clinical control group not characterized by evaluation fears were included.

METHODS

The Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition (MASC) was applied. It consists of 45 video sequences depicting interactions among four people at a dinner party. Participants are instructed to evaluate each scenario with respect to the characters' emotions, thoughts, and intentions from a bystander perspective (i.e. other-referent context).

RESULTS

Only the socially anxious groups (SAD and BDD) were overall less accurate than the other groups in correctly interpreting the social situations, whereas no difference was obtained between the OCD and the control group. Further analyses indicated that the SAD and BDD groups were less accurate in identifying other people's thoughts and intentions, whereas, again, no difference was observed between the OCD and control groups. In addition, the SAD group was less accurate in inferring thoughts and intentions than the OCD group. Interestingly, the groups did not differ with respect to identifying other people's emotions.

CONCLUSIONS

These results mostly confirm existing cognitive-behavioral models of SAD and BDD emphasizing that biased interpretation of what others think or intend is one of the key factors maintaining social anxiety and appearance-related concerns. Our study shows that this bias generalizes to social situations in which individuals take a third-person observer perspective.

Cue Integration: A Common Framework for Social Cognition and Physical Perception

Scientists examining how people understand other minds have long thought that this task must be something like how people perceive the physical world. This comparison has proven to be deeply generative, as models of physical perception and social cognition have evolved in parallel. In this article, I propose extending this classic analogy in a new direction by proposing cue integration as a common feature of social cognition and physical perception. When encountering complex social cues-which happens often-perceivers use multiple processes for understanding others' minds. Like physical senses (e.g., vision or audition), social cognitive processes have often been studied as though they operate in relative isolation. In the domain of physical perception, this assumption has broken down, following evidence that perception is instead characterized by pervasive integration of multisensory information. Such integration is, in turn, elegantly described by Bayesian inferential models. By adopting a similar cue integration framework, researchers can similarly understand and formally model the ways that we perceive others' minds based on complex social information.

Affective cognition: Exploring lay theories of emotion

Humans skillfully reason about others' emotions, a phenomenon we term affective cognition. Despite its importance, few formal, quantitative theories have described the mechanisms supporting this phenomenon. We propose that affective cognition involves applying domain-general reasoning processes to domain-specific content knowledge. Observers' knowledge about emotions is represented in rich and coherent lay theories, which comprise consistent relationships between situations, emotions, and behaviors. Observers utilize this knowledge in deciphering social agents' behavior and signals (e.g., facial expressions), in a manner similar to rational inference in other domains. We construct a computational model of a lay theory of emotion, drawing on tools from Bayesian statistics, and test this model across four experiments in which observers drew inferences about others' emotions in a simple gambling paradigm. This work makes two main contributions. First, the model accurately captures observers' flexible but consistent reasoning about the ways that events and others' emotional responses to those events relate to each other. Second, our work models the problem of emotional cue integration-reasoning about others' emotion from multiple emotional cues-as rational inference via Bayes' rule, and we show that this model tightly tracks human observers' empirical judgments. Our results reveal a deep structural relationship between affective cognition and other forms of inference, and suggest wide-ranging applications to basic psychological theory and psychiatry.